JENNY MARQUETTE’S EXPERIENCE AT CODECRAFT AS A UX DESIGN STUDENT

This is a series of blog posts written by CodeCraft student Jenny Marquette who is attending our part-time User Experience Design bootcamp. The series will cover her entire journey – from preparing for the program to getting her first job in the industry.

I began exploring the UX Design field a couple years ago after a friend, who is a developer, mentioned it was something he thought I’d be interested in. My background is in Graphic Design & Studio Art. I graduated college ten years ago, promptly moved to Colorado, and was told by several graphic design firms that they were happy to review my portfolio and provide feedback; they just weren’t hiring anytime soon.

In January 2017, I decided now was the time to make the career change and get serious about finding a UX program that would work for me. By February, I discovered CodeCraft School of Technology while researching local UX programs and began the process of enrolling in their part-time UX Design Bootcamp. I really wanted to find a bootcamp that I would be able to attend in person, that was affordable, and ideally, I would be able to continue working throughout the cohort. CodeCraft actually met all three criteria. Their UX bootcamp is part-time, which will allow me to continue working part-time for my current employer, the price is hands down the most affordable I’ve found for any UX bootcamp, and their cohort is in-person with a lead instructor as well as a few mentors. I felt strongly that this would be the best learning environment for me. I interviewed in March with Elysha Spector, the Admissions Manager, and a couple of days later received an acceptance email.

When I was accepted, I was planning to attend the April 2017 cohort. Elysha provided information and resources via email and she also answered any and all questions I had about the process, the cohort itself, and financing. I felt really well supported and could see that CodeCraft truly wanted to help me be successful. Still, with only one month until the cohort began, I was feeling pretty rushed trying to get prepared, make all the necessary adjustments to my work schedule, and figure out what would work best for me financially. Ultimately, I decided it would be best if I waited and attended the next available cohort, which worked out in my favor, as CodeCraft had reevaluated their cohort structure and decided to make the program more robust, adding additional hours of class time and more in-depth coverage of the skills and program knowledge needed. Overall, I felt like all of these changes only made feel more supported with what I hoped to gain by attending the bootcamp.

Leading up to the cohort, I was working about 45-50 hours per week, so finding time to prepare wasn’t always easy. Elysha was extremely helpful by emailing me what I should work on in preparation. This took the guesswork out and allowed me to focus on just doing the work. Also, as part of the enrollment in CodeCraft, they provide you an access code to attend in-person or on-demand Boulder Digital Arts lectures.

As part of my preparation, I utilized the BDA benefit to watch a couple of their on-demand lectures, Getting Started with Adobe InDesign and Introduction to HTML. I was able to attend a couple of in-person CodeCraft open house sessions, which was a nice opportunity to see the physical space and meet some of the staff, including the lead instructor, Michelle Coutinho.

In lieu of a Sketch class, Elysha provided me with an online Sketch tutorial, that was very useful. I also watched online tutorials through Udemy and Codecademy on HTML, CSS, and Javascript. In addition, I read Don’t Make Me Think Revisited by Steve Krug, and began reading HTML & CSS Design and Build Websites by Jon Duckett and UX Strategy by Jaime Levy.

Overall, the process and preparation leading up to the cohort was pretty painless. Elysha communicated often with me both via email and phone conversations. She provided me the resources and tools to feel prepared and supported. I am extremely excited to begin this journey and feel really fortunate that it is with CodeCraft.

ABOUT OUR UX DESIGN BOOTCAMP

Our part-time, 20-week, evening and weekend schedule bootcamp lets you get the skills you need without quitting your job. The program was designed by three UX design experts working for innovative companies like Google and Akamai who create products used by hundreds of millions of users. As a result our unique curriculum is rich with insights, best practices and real-world tools and techniques that you won’t find anywhere else.

After 12 weeks of intensive learning our full stack web development students are ready to graduate and start their careers with their new skills! We caught up with a couple of the students in this cohort to ask them about their experience. At CodeCraft School we are privileged and excited to be part of helping our students, with such diverse backgrounds, create a better future by giving them the skills they need to build, develop, and enrich their own careers, and, consequently, their lives!

Colin Stell

Where are you from?

I am originally from Golden, CO and I now live in Broomfield with my wife and 2 (soon to be 3) kids.

What were you doing before attending CodeCraft?

Before CodeCraft, I was working at a design agency in Boulder called Human Design where I was a project manager working with design, strategy and development teams.

What lead you to pursue web development?

After working for 10 years in the restaurant industry, I was eager to change careers and began looking into web-development. I was hooked from the start and had the incredible opportunity to launch my career in tech through Human Design working in project management. The web-development bug persisted and once the opportunity came to pursue it further, I joined CodeCraft to develop those skills at a professional level.

What have you learned at CodeCraft?

I have learned so much here at CodeCraft, I think the biggest takeaway, though, is understanding front-end and back-end technologies and being able to put them together to create a full-stack application. Some of the greatest highs and lows throughout the cohort surrounded getting front and back to talk to each other.

What are your post-graduation goals?

I am open to several possibilities. I would love to work for a company that emphasizes design and creating great looking apps that use back-end data and API in a cool way. Project Management with a greater understanding of coding is also a beneficial career path. Ultimately, the goal is to work in full-stack web-development though.

What was your favorite part of your experience at CodeCraft?

It’s been a fun process, even in some of the most stressful times, it’s been fun. I owe that to our instructor and TA’s. They are always positive and helping us through our struggles and celebrating with us when something finally comes together. It’s been great to get to know my fellow classmates as well and I hope to stay in touch with them going forward and see what we all end up creating!

What do you love most about programming/coding?

I love working with computers and I love seeing things come to life through writing code. It’s amazing to me to write out a bunch of code that translates into something that is useful and fun. The challenge of it all makes it worth it when you see things working and looking good. I love the creativity that something so detail oriented can be, you can do so much with writing code and it’s going to be fun to continue to explore that and get better over the coming years.

What’s a fun fact about yourself?

One of my favorite things to do is enjoy quality cigars at the local cigar lounge or on my patio at home. There is nothing more relaxing.

Stephany Prodromos

Where are you from?

I am from the Chicago area.

What were you doing before attending CodeCraft?

Before coming to CodeCraft, I have been studying Computer Science at Haverford College, just outside of Philadelphia.

What lead you to pursue web development?

I have always had a strong interest in Web Development. But unfortunately, most colleges do not offer the kind of curriculum CodeCraft does, the kind of fundamentals that I believe are essential for any modern programmer to know in order to succeed in the world of Web Development. That is why I have chosen to take a leave of absence from college in order to learn these fundamental skills and immerse myself into this space.

What have you learned at CodeCraft?

It is quite astonishing to look back at these twelve weeks and realize how much we have actually learned here in a relatively short period of time. Essentially we have learned how to build fully functioning websites and applications using HTML, CSS and Javascript, while also incorporating all aspects of the MEAN Stack. But not only did we learn to code, we practiced our interview skills and were lucky to have several networking opportunities as well.

What are your post-graduation goals?

After graduation, I would like to continue developing my programming skills by working on some of my own projects, before eventually looking for a job in Web Development. Specifically, I would like to be a programmer for the Blockchain.

What was your favorite part of your experience at CodeCraft?

I would say the Hackathon has probably been my favorite experience thus far. Seeing how much everyone cared about what they were doing, and being able to have a bit more independence creating our application that really tested our skills made this such an enriching experience. It was a difficult week for sure, but being able to produce our own unique application with skills we have only had for just under two months was so rewarding by the end of it. I remember one of our TAs saying that they truly saw everyone become a developer that week.

What do you love most about programming/coding?

I love that there is always something new to be learned. Things move very fast in this industry, but that is what makes learning it so exciting; there is always something that can be improved upon and made better.

What’s a fun fact about yourself?

A fun fact about me is that, since I was 8 years old, I have been a classically trained Opera singer. My sister, Lexy, and I would perform around the country, and for seven years held our own charity benefit concerts for a fantastic organization called Misericordia based out of Chicago.

Katie McBride

Where are you from?

I’m originally from Kansas, but have been in Colorado for 15+ years. I currently live in Broomfield.

What were you doing before attending CodeCraft?

I’ve worked in construction management for the last 10 years or so, specifically helping projects manage their schedules and deadlines. I enjoy technology and the efficiencies it allows, but construction doesn’t utilize technology as much as I wanted to.

What lead you to pursue web development?

Learning web development allows me to help businesses in ways I wasn’t able to in the past.

What have you learned at CodeCraft?

I’ve learned so many things at CodeCraft, including front end web design, how to build and use databases, run my own server, and deploy a website into the world.

What are your post-graduation goals?

I’d like to find a company that will keep training me, and support the learning process, and I want to be able to help projects succeed with what I’ve learned, combined with my past project management experiences.

What was your favorite part of your experience at CodeCraft?

My favorite part of the CodeCraft experience so far was putting everything into practice through the group project. It allowed us to work together and learn from each other in a practical way. This was one of the best learning experiences.

What do you love most about programming/coding?

I love learning how things work behind the scenes, and seeing how websites and other software are built, and being able to replicate the processes myself. I love knowing how things work.

What’s a fun fact about yourself?

I’m a huge Jayhawk basketball fan!

CODECRAFT BOOTCAMPS

Tuition Only $10,500. This full-time 12 week intensive full-time bootcamp is designed to get you started as a junior full stack web developer. You'll learn web fundamentals like HTML/CSS as well as popular JavaScript-based technologies like Node, Vue, and Mongo!

Tuition Only $10,500. This 24-week evening and weekend schedule program is designed to prepare you for a career in web development without quitting your job. You'll become a full-stack web developer, learning programming fundamentals and the hottest JavaScript frameworks!

Tuition Only $8,900. This 20-week night and weekend schedule bootcamp will jumpstart your career in the growing field of User Experience Design. It covers design essentials and all the phases of the UX workflow. As you learn apply your new skills by working on a real-world project for a real client while creating a body of work for your portfolio.

Michelle Coutinho came to CodeCraft with over 12 years’ experience in User Interface Design. Michelle always felt called to teaching, and she loves being able to help students take the next step in their lives.

In an interview with Switchup, Michelle talks about her teaching style and the environment at CodeCraft. She also offers her advice on how students can make the most of a bootcamp, and how a UX skillset can help them build a successful career in tech.

You joined CodeCraft with 12 years’ experience in User Interface Design. What made you decide to start teaching?

Actually, I was invited to teach while I was working in the Instructional Design Department at Full Sail University. I was editing videos and creating media and educational content for courses throughout the school. The Program Director of the Web Design & Development Degree asked me if I would like to step into teaching a Usability and User Experience Design class in their program and I accepted.

It was a really natural fit for me, both the content of the course and stepping into the role of a teacher. I really enjoy teaching, I feel it is my calling to work with students through mentorship and help them take the next steps in their lives.

What do you like best about the environment at CodeCraft?

The people at CodeCraft are really great people to work with and I am also grateful to be a part of an environment that is so focused on education, community outreach, networking, and career change. Our school is a really casual and open, yet at the same time is very focused and professional. It is important to strike a balance between these things to create a comfortable and accessible learning environment. We want to give our students room to be creative problem solvers as well as teach them the material we need them to learn to be successful.

Bootcamps are known for attracting students from all backgrounds. Which qualities or skills should students possess to be successful in UX?

The field of UX is multi disciplinary and the range of skills successful students will possess will also be very diverse. For example, UX researchers and designers will have good problem solving skills, like to come up with innovative solutions to challenges, enjoy studying human psychology, understanding and analyzing people’s behavior. Visual User Interface (UI) designers will enjoy building screen layouts, writing content for projects, and designing user flows and interactions between screens. Over the course, students can decide which specific discipline of UX they want to move into based on where they were the strongest during the coursework and what they enjoy the most.

What percentage of students enroll in the bootcamp from a non-design background? How can a student who does not have a design background prepare for the bootcamp?

Often times less than half of our students may not view themselves as savvy with design. Usually, a combination of: mentoring on concepts like Visual Hierarchy, Visual Flow; a stepped approach to learning design software; and practice with creating content with design elements, will get them to a place where they are ready to move forward with other aspects of creating a good user experience.

Ultimately, the most important thing to prepare is getting to know the ins and outs of learning how to use design software. At CodeCraft we use the first three weeks of remote classwork to build familiarity with the software, as well as learning a bare bones Information Architecture. This is designed to allow students to come into the course familiar with the tools and vernacular of the industry–essentially ready to move forward with the more complex aspects of the crafting meaningful experiences.

What is your teaching style? How have you developed your approach as you work with more cohorts?

I offer a flexible teaching style for my students. Sometimes I will lead with a discussion, and other times I will get right into the lecture and the lesson plan. Individually working with students, I am able to hone in on what that particular student may need and offer a more personalized one-on-one approach. But generally, I want the class to be a cohesive and supportive environment, where we listen to, and work with each other.

Over time, I have learned to allow my students to speak more often in class by demonstrating and sharing what they already know. This facilitates an environment where the students are learning from one another. Everyone has something to offer about this industry from their personal life experiences, and it is also helpful and empowering for the student as they present to the class.

How do you help students move forward when they are stuck on a particular design problem?

Asking questions is a great way to get a student into a creative problem solving mode. If we are designing a scenario, I would ask something like, “What would that type of person do in that situation?” Or even, “What situation would that type of person be in?” So, I would help them problem solve by thinking about the problem in a new way. If it’s particularly a layout design problem, I may suggest a new design pattern they could attempt to organize the content into, and those are pretty well structured out.

What steps can a student take to get the most out of a bootcamp?

Be present. This is a big commitment, and it is important that you fully take the steps to create space in your life to commit to learning. Taking a bootcamp is one of those situations where you will get out what you put into it. Get good sleep, exercise, and eat well so you are able to handle working full time and learning at night if that is the case for you. Also, come with an open mind, be teachable, and ready to experiment with new information. Be open to learning.

How can a student best prepare for the job market after a UX bootcamp?

As with any career switch, landing a new job as an Experience Designer isn’t always easy. We’ve found that focusing on building a solid portfolio of their design projects is the most important step. Additionally, it’s important in this industry to craft a cohesive personal brand is another key step to standing out. At CodeCraft, Meredith Rafter is our Career Services expert and she works with students to craft a personal brand and land a job. Near the end of the cohort we spend time with our students crafting a pitch for their prototype designs, as well their design process more broadly. During this process we seek to bring in mentors who are senior industry professionals, and hiring managers, who can assist both with the design and pitch process.

At CodeCraft we weave career services and job search into everything we do. In addition to learning the skills necessary for the job, our students work with career services to create a post-graduation strategy, learn soft skills, and participating in mock interviews. We even provide professional headshot photos for our students. In addition, we’re continually working with the hiring community to make sure that our curriculum reflects what they are looking for in junior-level UX designers.

Where are your students now? What kinds of jobs have your students secured after CodeCraft or Full Sail Academy?

It greatly depends on the student and what their specialty is. Some will be hired and visual designers and others as UX researchers. Several of our students are working for notable companies or creative agencies in the Boulder/Denver area–as well as working for companies nationally. Regardless, much of our students’ success is a combination of the skills they learn in class and the work they do to network, build a portfolio and more broadly a personal brand. .

What are the most important things for a student to consider when they are comparing bootcamps?

Our UX Design bootcamp was created by three highly experienced UX Designers from diverse backgrounds working on products at places like Google that are used around the world. They worked together to make a program that is really unique and goes beyond what most bootcamps cover. For instance, something I really like about the program we have designed is that it goes through all aspects of the UX design process. So we walk you through from the research phase, to building an interactive prototype, all the way to designing a case study, learning to market yourself, and build your portfolio. I feel this is a really rare for a bootcamp to do.

Adding portfolio design and career skills comes from my experience seeing what my students needed, as well from my own personal experience wishing I would have come away with this after college. There are other programs that focus on just one part of the UX process, such as building wireframes or data analysis, but we offer a broad scope to the field so it depends on the depth of the course you are looking to take.

What other advice do you have for someone who is interested in joining a bootcamp?

Initially it may feel like a big commitment, but at the end it will be well worth it. There will be times that are challenging with lots of hard work, but there will be other times where you are flying right through. This is all part of the process, and when it’s all done, you will feel very good for having gone through it.

Overall, it is a very rewarding experience, and you will be proud of yourself as you enter a new industry or shift the focus of your career in new, more expansive direction. This is one door that you will enter into that can open you up for many more to come.

To learn more about student experiences at CodeCraft School, head over to SwitchUp. Or, if you’re interested in a new career as a User Experience Designer, read more about our User Experience Design bootcamp.

If you’re like many graphic designers and creatives today, your skills are likely either underutilized or under appreciated. Meanwhile, the tech industry is seeing fantastic job growth.

There’s More to Tech Than Just Coding

If you’ve ever wanted to work in tech but not abandon your creative and aesthetic skills then you should consider a career in User Experience Design (UX Design). You don’t have to be a coder to be part of the future of technology!

What is User Experience Design?

Simply put, UX Design is the way someone experiences a product or service. Think about the way you love some apps and loathe others or struggle to use some products but your favorite things are completely intuitive. The better the user experience, the more you’ll use it, buy it and recommend it to friends. That’s why a growing number of companies are embracing UX Design at the highest levels of their businesses. Learn more about UX Design and why it matters.

So, it’s no surprise that UX Designers are in very high demand. In fact, UX Designer is rated as one of the top 11 jobs in America for 2017 by CBS MoneyWatch. PayScale reports that the average salary of a graphic designer in the US of $41,000. Compare that to the average salary of a UX Designer which is $74,000. It gets better! According to the Creative Group Salary Guide, the average salary for UX designers with one to three years of experience ranges from $49,000 to $75,000. Those with three to five years of experience can expect to make $71,250 to $97,250.

UX design is a modern career fit for professionals who come from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds such as graphic design, coding, product design, psychology or many others. Some key attributes of a great UX designer are empathy, curiosity, problem solving, and being able to communicate complicated concepts clearly to others.

20 Weeks To A Lucrative UX Design Career

CodeCraft’s 20-week UX Design bootcamp is a part-time, evening and weekend schedule so you can learn the new skills required to pursue a career in User Experience Design while maintaining your current job and commitments. Our unique program was crafted by world-class UX experts who’ve worked with cutting-edge tech companies like Google and Samsung.

The bootcamp is designed to expose you to the entire UX design process while working on a real-world project for a real client. You’ll graduate ready to be hired into a junior UX designer role.

Free BDA Classes

In addition, all CodeCraft students can take FREE classes at our partner organization, Boulder Digital Arts before, during and three months after graduating which allows you to customize your learning around your specific goals and stand out to employers after graduation.

What is ux design?

Chris: UX design to me is really just the ability to consider a product from a user’s perspective or—call it a person’s perspective. Really connecting their needs and goals with the business needs and goals in creating a product that fits at that intersection.

Jason: UX design is how a person experiences a company or an organization, and that can be through its products or services.

Nikki: Sometimes there’s confusion about the difference between UI which is User Interface design and UX which is User Experience design. Traditionally UI has really focused on what happens on a particular screen when you’re interacting with a website or with a mobile app or a kiosk, for example. We’re looking at how elements on the screen relate to one another, where buttons are placed, etc. User experience, though, is about taking a slightly broader lens on that design process. We don’t just look at what happens when you interact with a mobile app, but we might think about what happens before someone even picks up their phone to interact with that app and what happens when they set their phone down again afterwards. So it’s looking at the person: how they use it, the context of use, and then “what are their needs?” “What are they feeling what are their expectations when they come to this product or this tool?”

Why ux design matters

Jason: User experience is very important to companies, especially now, and even more so in the future. That’s because just having a technology-enabled product is not enough. It has to be a good experience: people have to get things done that they’re trying to accomplish, and they have to walk away [from it] thinking that it was a good experience that they want to tell their friends and family about.

Nikki: There are a lot of big challenges that face UX today. I think one of the big ones is figuring out what we do with some of the new platforms that are emerging: virtual reality is certainly one of them… for several years now, we’ve also had wearables emerging as another type of new platform. So thinking about “how do we move beyond just the computer screen” or just the phone to address some of the other types of products that are coming on to the scene.

UX designers are in demand

Chris: I think the demand for UX designers is not going to go away anytime soon. I think that great products are differentiated based on the experience and sometimes solely [on] the experience.

Nikki: I think there’s a huge future demand for UX designers. I think we’ve seen a trend in UX becoming more important—more critical to business—and that business[es] are really recognizing that and trying to bring UX in not only earlier in the development of products but having UX have sort of—have a seat at the table in boardroom conversations… kind of at that C-suite level.

Chris: There are a lot of companies hiring UX designers right now. It’s a very in-demand type of position, and you have companies that are startups you have companies that are enterprises… it’s really the whole gamut.

Nikki: We’re seeing companies hire UX designers in droves, and it doesn’t just apply to technology companies or maybe companies you would traditionally associate with UX.

Jason: It can be startups that are not even tech based, it can be established companies that aren’t necessarily thought of as being tech based…

Nikki: Big manufacturing corporations, consumer packaged goods companies… they’re bringing design in and making that a key focus area. So it doesn’t just have to be Googles or the Apples of the world. Really, as a UX designer you can be looking at a wide range of companies as prospective employers.

What kind of person becomes a UX designer?

Jason: For people that want to become a UX designer, I think background doesn’t really matter. I’ve worked with folks that have become UX designers that were previously teachers, architects, business managers; it really doesn’t matter. I think the connective tissue there is that they are curious and wanting to solve problems

Nikki: The beauty of UX, in my mind, is that people come to this field with a wide variety of backgrounds. There’s a lot of diversity in how people ultimately land on user experience as a career path.

Chris: I’ve seen success with people coming in from all different levels of experience in different industries. I think what it really takes though is someone who can really handle interactions with other people and help lead, help to facilitate workshops, and really just interact and be creative and explore ideas.

Jason: I first got into UX design kind of through the side door. Originally I was a graphic designer and brand strategist, but I always liked puzzles, and I always liked technology and when you combine all those things, UX design was a very attractive industry for me.

UX design is more than just computers

Chris: CodeCraft specifically has a really interesting approach and a very unique approach to teaching…

Jason: So there [are] many different tools in UX design and it doesn’t always have to be on the computer.

Chris: We use a lot of approaches to designing digital products, and some of those aren’t always digital approaches. We use our hands, we use paper, we use whiteboards, we try to get our ideas out into a way that we can work with them and have kind of a tangible way to massage them into ideas that work.

Jason: We make sure that our classroom is set up with a varying amount of classroom instruction time but we also save a lot of studio lab time, and that allows our students to collaborate not only with the other students and the clients but also with the instructors so giving them that face to face feedback time is really important for them to grow their skills set but also push their designs forward.

We’re pretty excited about CodeCraft’s UX Design Tech Bootcamp here in Boulder, CO. We believe that the area of UX design is growing at a fast pace, and the numbers back this up: CNN Money in 2017 has named UX Designer as one of the “Best Jobs in America,” and the technical staffing agency Robert Half calls the UX Design role “one of the most in-demand creative industry jobs right now.” In this video, our UX Design program instructors and mentors share some background on how they created our UX curriculum, what the program focuses on, and what their goals are for our students. If you’re interested in a UX design job, we invite you to take a look at our UX Design Bootcamp and decide if it’s the right step for your own career.

Video Transcript

Meet the designers of our UX curriculum

Jason: My name is Jason Walzer. I’m a UX Design Instructor at CodeCraft, but I’m also a UX Manager and Design Lead at Google.

Chris: I’m Chris Alvarez, I’m a UX Designer, [I] have been for about ten years now, I’ve worked for product companies, internally, and also with consultancies.

Nikki: My name is Nikki Pfarr, I am a UX Researcher and Strategist. I got my start as a UX Designer, actually, working at Google and I went back to graduate school to focus a little bit more on the research and strategy portions of the UX process.

Jason: The other instructors and I really put a lot of thought into creating this curriculum, and we made sure that we brought our different perspectives to the curriculum itself.

Designed by experts to prepare you for a real-world UX design career

Nikki: We put a lot of time into designing a curriculum that would prepare students for real-world UX roles. We wanted to think a lot about how we could tackle the entire UX process and not just focus in on one sliver of the process, which is sometimes what you get when you look at some of these boot camp curriculums. So for us it was really important that we looked at everything from competitive research, to market research, and user research, all the way through ideation, building the actual user interface and user experience, and increasing the fidelity up to that final interactive prototype level.

Jason: I think a lot of UX bootcamp programs nowadays—especially ones that are given online only—tend to focus really on the tools that people use. So, what are the tools and the software programs that they use to create the UX design definition… that’s great and that’s part of the curriculum here as well, however we really expanded out and approach things from a higher level, especially in the beginning. So we teach our students how to approach user research [to] get that foundational understanding, [then] we help them explore and collaborate with other folks on a team, whether it’s engineers [or] product managers, and then we get into the actual tools, and how do they define their design definition and move forward.

Nikki: The goal is that they get familiarity with the different methods that are part of all of the stages of the process, but then they can also decide what they’re most interested in and what they want to dig down deeper into. So we’re here to help them figure out what they love the most, and then also to connect them with the resources they might need later on to maybe go more in-depth into certain areas. So not everyone has to be a soup-to-nuts UX research practitioner—that’s certainly a valuable type of role, but you might find yourself more drawn to UX research, or UX writing, or maybe the visual design aspect and that’s great too. …and we want to make sure we’re exposing students to the breadth, so they can decide where they want to go deeper into the process.

Chris: There’s a lot of things that you can’t get out of an online course—a lot of that is the personal interactions that you have on a real UX project, and that’s really hard to imitate online. So we try and provide a place where we have those interactions in place in the classroom, and we have a lot of dynamics back and forth between the instructors, so it feels more like a real type of environment for learning.

Real world projects

Nikki: One of the things I’m excited about when it comes to CodeCraft’s curriculum is the fact that we’re working with local clients here in the Boulder community. So students get hooked up with a client organization that has some type of user experience need, they get to go through the class with a focus on a project that helps solve that problem for a real world organization.

Jason: The idea of having students do a project with the actual client is really rooted in the fact that we have to be dealing with real people with real problems, and… those people are not just the users but also the client, so they have real business problems, and when you’re able to work with a real client you get that deeper understanding of what they’re trying to solve and how you can help them.

Nikki: This means that we’re not only teaching fundamental UX skills and methods, but we’re also teaching the intricacies and the nuances associated with interacting with the client. …how do you tell the story of what you’re doing? How do you present your work to your stakeholders or to your client team?

Jason: So as a hiring manager myself, I know that companies and organizations are looking for UX designers that have a wide range of skill sets. Whether it’s user research, visual design, interaction design… and what I think CodeCraft is giving these students is a leg up in the industry.

]]>9925Panel Discussion: “From Bootcamp Graduation to First Paycheck”https://www.codecraftschool.com/blog/from-bootcamp-graduation-to-first-paycheck/
Wed, 02 Aug 2017 17:35:47 +0000https://www.codecraftschool.com/?p=9930Earlier this week, we hosted an expert panel discussion on the steps between graduating from a coding bootcamp and getting your first job. All three of our panelists are themselves coding bootcamp graduates, and also have worked in the “real world” as web developers using those skills they learned in their bootcamps. We covered several […]

]]>Earlier this week, we hosted an expert panel discussion on the steps between graduating from a coding bootcamp and getting your first job. All three of our panelists are themselves coding bootcamp graduates, and also have worked in the “real world” as web developers using those skills they learned in their bootcamps.

We covered several questions regarding the process, including:

What was your experience going from graduation day to getting a job?

How prepared were you for the job search?

Were there any surprises in the interview process? Did interviewers stump you with questions you didn’t expect?

Did the companies you interviewed at want skills or experience you didn’t have? If so, how did you find a way to gain that experience/learn those skills?

How did your discussions about salary and benefits go?

What would you do differently this time around when job seeking (if applicable)?

How did you fit into your new role working on a team (if applicable)?

What were your daily duties at your first job?

What kind of job training/upskilling have you gotten (if any)?

We hold panel discussions like these at our Boulder campus on a regular basis as a benefit to our web development bootcamp students. We’re committed to helping our students not only master the skills they’re learning in their bootcamps, but to assist them in the job search process after it’s done as well. If you’d like to see videos of some of the talks we’ve given in the past, check out our YouTube channel. As always, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or are interested in applying for a program yourself.

]]>9930CodeCraft Responds To Dev Bootcamp and The Iron Yard Shutting Downhttps://www.codecraftschool.com/blog/codecraft-responds-to-devbootcamp-and-the-iron-yard-shutting-down/
Thu, 27 Jul 2017 21:19:38 +0000https://www.codecraftschool.com/?p=9829If you’re keeping up with the latest news in the world of tech, you’ve likely heard that not just one, but two large coding bootcamps have announced they’ll be shutting down. Since these announcements were made, many people have offered their thoughts, and we’d like to share our perspective as well. The two bootcamps closing […]

]]>If you’re keeping up with the latest news in the world of tech, you’ve likely heard that not just one, but two large coding bootcamps have announced they’ll be shutting down. Since these announcements were made, many people have offered their thoughts, and we’d like to share our perspective as well.

The two bootcamps closing down are The Iron Yard and Dev Bootcamp (one of the pioneers of this kind of education). If you read their official statements, you’ll see that they’re both essentially struggling with the same core issue: profitability. Dev Bootcamp has said they “cannot reach a sustainable business model,” and while the Iron Yard simply references the “current environment” as their reason, it seems to speak to increased competition in the space.

First of all, we want to acknowledge that both The Iron Yard and Dev Bootcamp were groundbreaking institutions in the tech bootcamp scene and have done a terrific job in helping create the industry and launch the careers of scores of their students. You can read dozens of online comments shared by former students mentioning how helpful and formative their bootcamp experience was.

What Happened?

We’d like to be clear that these surprising announcements should not be viewed as an indictment of the industry as a whole. It’s easy to see two large organizations shutting down in the same month and assume, “Well, maybe there’s something inherently unworkable with the whole business model,” but we don’t think that’s the case.

Both Dev Bootcamp and The Iron Yard had taken on substantial funding, which comes with significant pressure to grow and, in particular, to return profits to their investors. This funding helped them both stay in business and expand with locations spread across the country, but as another bootcamp founder stated in a recent blog post: “Education is a difficult thing to scale. It’s complex.” We agree wholeheartedly. The Iron Yard has fifteen campuses across the USA, and DevBootcamp has six. At CodeCraft School of Technology, we have just one campus, in Boulder, Colorado, and that’s by design.

We’ve intentionally not sought outside funding. We don’t have any outside investment money and have essentially bootstrapped our way since we started over two years ago. We don’t have the fanciest campus, and we’re not trying to sponsor every event in the local tech scene. We’re careful to pick and choose what we can and can’t do. Right now, we’re entirely focused on fulfilling our core mission – which is to offer the highest quality training to students that empowers them to start a new career or enhance the one they already have – without worrying about rapid growth or expansion.

Bootcamps Still Working For Graduates

Almost 23,000 students will go through bootcamps in 2017.

Even though it’s early for the bootcamp industry, there are still a lot of great things happening. Course Report recently released its annual report that found the coding school market has grown 10.5x since 2013. In the report, they also estimate that almost 23,000 students will go through bootcamps in 2017. The industry is healthy, and the outlook is bright, but it is only in its adolescence. The growth will continue as more and more consumers, and employers see the value of the bootcamp education model.

Employers Are Hiring Bootcamp Graduates

At CodeCraft, we continue to have more and more employers approach us to learn about our students than ever before. Every day, people in our society incorporate more technology into our lives. As a result, the demand for qualified developers and UX designers continues to grow.

“72% of employers think bootcamp grads are “just as prepared” to be high performers as degree holders.”

Meanwhile employers are becoming increasingly confident in bootcamp graduates. According to a recent study by Indeed, 72% of employers think bootcamp grads are “just as prepared” to be high performers as degree holders.

Technology is moving faster than ever, and bootcamps are uniquely positioned to respond to the frequent changes in demand for certain technologies. At CodeCraft, we get frequent feedback from potential employers on what the latest and most important skills are in the job market. With this data, we’re able to modify our curriculum as needed to stay up to date. This flexibility to adapt quickly is the core difference between a bootcamp and a more traditional tech education.

The modern-day employer sees the value in diversity in both experience and background that many bootcamp grads bring. Bootcamp students are quite diverse, they’ve got a wide variety of life experiences, and they’re hungry. The industry is craving that kind of honed talent and diversity of thought, and the talent gap still exists and the void far from being filled. Many corporations are actively seeking out bootcamps and their grads for these reasons.

At CodeCraft, Class Is Still In Session

We’d like to welcome anyone who was considering either the Iron Yard or Dev Bootcamp to take a look at what CodeCraft has to offer. We offer a JavaScript-based Full Stack Web Development bootcamp (both full-time and part-time) as well as a part-time UX Design program, which is great for people who are looking for a high-growth career in the tech world but don’t want to be a developer (watch a video with more info here).

At CodeCraft, we’re deeply committed to this type of education and to the success of our students. We keep our class sizes small and have world-class instructors who have a passion for sharing their knowledge. But you don’t have to take it from us. We encourage you to check out our reviews at Course Report and Switchup.

CodeCraft School of Technology was born out of another organization we founded over 13 years ago called Boulder Digital Arts (BDA). As such, we’re intimately familiar with the educational space, and we’ve spent more than a dozen years finely honing the right model for bringing hands-on classes to the public in cutting-edge technologies, offering literally hundreds of classes each year. In fact, all enrolled CodeCraft students can attend BDA classes for no additional cost. This enables our students to skill-up in adjacent tools and supplemental technologies during their bootcamp, in topics ranging from typography to search engine optimization, so that they are even more attractive to potential employers.

And it’s hard to beat Boulder as a place to start a career in tech! Not only is it one of the most beautiful cities in America, but is also a “thriving hotspot for tech innovation,” and is part of the larger Boulder-Denver area with jobs aplenty and quick access to outside recreational activities from skiing to mountain biking.

Finally, if you’re not from Colorado, we have you covered! We have arranged affordable housing for our students, located a short distance from our campus. We even have a bike for you to use!

We look forward to continuing serving the Colorado community and the tech industry in general, by educating, training, and mentoring folks who want to either start a career or change careers, and then helping place them in jobs that are fun and offer opportunities for growth.

We’re excited to celebrate our April 2017 cohort’s completion of CodeCraft’s User Experience (UX) Design Bootcamp! These graduates have spent the past 14 weeks learning about the entire UX design process and have worked with a real client (local non-profit) to craft a real-world UX solution. From research to building user flows and wireframes all the way to ultimately creating an interactive prototype. We are glad you are here to learn about the diverse problems the students chose to tackle with their course projects and meet these up-and-coming UX designers.

At CodeCraft School we are privileged and excited to help people create a better future. We’re dedicated to giving our students the skills they need to build, develop, and enrich their own careers and their lives.

Andria Folk

I created an app called Dirty Side Down for dirt bike riders to find places to ride and nearby amenities in addition to tracking rides with GPS integration. It will also have crowd sourcing capabilities so that riders can leave comments, upload photos and give their own opinion of difficulty which will be shown as an average on that trail’s page. Riders can easily publish a post about their ride with photos, comments and GPS info onto their social media platforms spreading the word about their hobby and the app itself.

I plan on integrating my UX bootcamp experience with my current career in order to become more involved within the tech industry. I am incredibly excited for this next chapter in my life where I can create the trifecta that is UX: design (which I love), empathy (which I am innately wired for) and technology (the increasingly evolving medium through which we mine deeper).

David Mondragon

The purpose of my project was to create a vision concept around the user workflow design of an existing product at my place of employment. It’s called SayIt Cloud. It was prepared with technologies such as hundreds of sticky notes, cardboard, and paper. Also, digital tools like Sketch, InVision, and Moqups on a Mac computer. Video recording software is also handy for research interviews.

I plan to take the UX Design skills I’ve learned and apply them in several different ways at my current job as a Product Owner. I’ll use the skills to improve my day-to-day product decisions, advance the design thinking in our company, and empathize with the design tasks our people face.

Nell Roberts

12 weeks ago I was presented with a challenge: design part of a mobile app for a local company focused on tracking volunteer impact. In order to do this I needed to better understand what was needed from the user’s perspective. So I did generative research and interviewed a range of volunteers. I went on to analyze my research, develop personas and storyboards, create user flows and wireframes, and finally, a semi-polished prototype to put in front of users.

Throughout each stage I had challenges and moments of insight. I brainstormed numerous ideas and solutions. I threw out the bad and kept the good. I learned to let go of my perfectionist tendencies and fail fast and fail forward. I was continually reminded of the need to just do something when all I had in front of me was an empty canvas (whether that canvas was my brain, a blank sheet of paper, or a new Sketch artboard).

I could easily (and happily) keep working on this project once the class is over. I want to keep iterating, keep improving, and keep hearing back from real users. I think what this company is doing is important and I’ve loved getting to work on this challenge of theirs.

Post graduation, my goal is to keep building on what I’ve learned from this class. I have a side UX project I’ve been tossing around in my mind that I am eager to get working on. But my primary goal is to get a full-time job working as a UX designer and be more connected to the UX community in the Denver/Boulder area.

]]>10008Introducing Raphael Serota, Lead Instructor for Web Development Bootcampshttps://www.codecraftschool.com/blog/introducing-raphael-serota-lead-instructor-web-development-bootcamps/
https://www.codecraftschool.com/blog/introducing-raphael-serota-lead-instructor-web-development-bootcamps/#respondWed, 12 Jul 2017 21:12:14 +0000https://www.codecraftschool.com/?p=9339Raphael Serota is one of CodeCraft’s newest employees, and we’re excited to have him join our team as the lead instructor for our Full-Time Full-Stack Web Development Bootcamp. Here’s a little bit of Q&A we recently had with Raphael about his background, his approach as an instructor, and how bootcamp students can make the most […]

]]>Raphael Serota is one of CodeCraft’s newest employees, and we’re excited to have him join our team as the lead instructor for our Full-Time Full-Stack Web Development Bootcamp. Here’s a little bit of Q&A we recently had with Raphael about his background, his approach as an instructor, and how bootcamp students can make the most of their time both as students and later as graduates.

Q: Tell us about your background: you went to college but didn’t study computer science?

A: That’s right. My experience with getting into web development was atypical. I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Cognitive Science from Hampshire College, in Massachusetts. I mainly focused on the psychology of decision making, especially how people interpret risk and uncertainty. I also studied quite a bit of the psychology of education, so that’s been more directly relevant now that I am an educator. But I didn’t study computer science.

Q: How did you go from studying psychology to being a programmer?

A: The college I went to required that I spend my entire senior year creating a research study. So while doing that, I decided I needed to teach myself to program in order to create the experiment I wanted, which would gather data and analyze it. I didn’t know anything about programming at the time, but a friend told me that learning Python (which is a programming language) was as close as you could come to speaking English with your computer. So I went to Barnes & Noble, and picked up the skinniest book I could find on Python, and read it cover to cover. That’s how I got started. (On a side note, that’s the last programming book I ever read! I’m still constantly reading about programming, but these days, it’s mostly forums, blogs, tutorials, guides, etc.).

“I went to Barnes & Noble, and picked up the skinniest book I could find on Python, and read it cover to cover.”

After I had finished college, I wanted to go to graduate school, so while applying to grad programs, I got a job at a neuroscience laboratory at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. I worked at the lab doing data analysis and experiment presentation programming. My job was to write the software that would show patients images, and we’d take “functional” MRI scans (fMRI) which are like taking a video of the brain as it processes the images the patients saw. Working at the lab, I realized that going to graduate school would be a long and complicated process that would take many years, but the programming I was doing was not long term. I could write a program, and the very next day, the other people in the lab would be using it to automate the tedious tasks in their daily life. They would tell me how useful the programs I wrote were, and they were so thankful. I decided that programming was the most fun I had in that lab. I liked it better than all the other aspects of academia.

Q: By now, you know a lot about programming and have worked as a developer in the past. Why did you decide to become a teacher?

A: It’s way more fun! I have worked as a developer for a few companies in Boulder, doing “the 9-5 developer thing.” But the day to day experience of teaching is fun for me. I like explaining things; I am kind of a pedantic person—I feel like I have a good understanding of how the Internet works and how coding works, and I frequently see that these concepts are explained poorly. I like to think that I can do a better job explaining them, and I like to help people get into the industry. With the actual code that I write during the day, the examples I make are fun, and I like to make silly applications to illustrate a concept. As an instructor, I can do this, because I don’t have to be generating business value for an employer with the actual applications I build, so that helps me be a little more creative and have a bit more fun as well.

Q: What is your approach to teaching web development?

A: My approach to teaching is this: I cannot shove knowledge into your head. You’re not going to learn passively by just listening to my lectures. I do have quite a few lectures in the course, but my expectation is that students listening to lectures are not going to immediately understand these concepts just because I explain them.

When I explain a concept over the course of ninety minutes, it’s a very concise, fluid explanation. Sometimes students feel like “Raphael made this sound so simple in class… why can’t I remember or understand it?” The truth is: when I was learning programming, I would read a blog post that explained a concept concisely, but I wouldn’t get it. Then I’d read four more blog posts that explained it in different ways, but I still wouldn’t get it. Then I’d actually write some code, and try to do the thing all these blog posts were talking about, and only after I did it with my own hands a few times would it finally make sense.

My overarching philosophy is: with a lecture; I can’t teach you everything you need to know to be a developer. But I can teach you enough that you can make mistakes on your own, and through making mistakes—figuratively banging your head against a wall—that’s where you actually learn how to code.

“I’m basically explaining how to swing a golf club and I expect to watch you fail repeatedly until you can learn to get the ball close the hole.”

I often like to compare learning programming with learning physical skills in that you have to develop muscle memory. For example, imagine you’re learning how to swing a golf club. That’s a very precise physical skill, and there are a lot of academic concepts that go into it: you can study the rotation, the inertia, the muscle groups you’re using, etc., all day long. A really sophisticated golf instructor could talk for hours about “the proper form of a golf swing,” and if you listen to that, you might feel like you understand it. But that’s very far from being able to swing a golf club properly yourself. So I’m basically explaining how to swing a golf club and then I expect to watch you fail repeatedly until you can learn to get the ball close the hole.

Q: In your opinion, what kind of background or personality type makes the best kind of student?

A: I feel like I have different ideas on this than other people in the industry. A lot of people say you’ve got to be “very logical.” But I studied logic in high school, and I use what I learned in maybe the first week of that course as a programmer. You don’t have to be a master logician… there is some “if this then that,” and maybe some “and’s and or’s” mixed in, but it’s not outrageously complicated logic.

Also, people say you need to be really good at math—I disagree with that too. I’m pretty good at math, but the truth is that in programming, the computer does the math for you. You just need to know how to talk to the computer and tell the computer what to do. I think of programming as more of a language skill.

So I have two specific thoughts on the kinds of people that might make the best students:

First, I look for people with creative backgrounds. English majors, I think, tend to make better programmers. Particularly fiction writers. I remember when I was in high school, I had a bunch of friends who wrote fan fiction—you know, Harry Potter fan fiction—they’re taking this huge universe with dozens or even hundreds of characters and trying to incorporate their existing relationships with each other and then also designing new relationships between all these characters that change over time. And I imagine these people are drawing up these really complex storyboards and it’s all using made up names. That’s a big complexity, similar to your challenge as a web developer. With web development, a lot of the hard stuff you have to do is just keeping track of all this stuff that has different names that you had to come up with. You have to name everything you make, and you keep track of what its role is in this broader application—your broader story—and keep track of how that changes over time.

And there’s also the immediate physical aspect of being willing to sit in front of a computer for hours on end. Which fiction writers are comfortable with. I’ve met a lot of people who are judged by non-coders to be good potential coders because they’re hardworking, determined, good math and logic, etc. But many of these people… they just hate sitting down in front of a computer. So even if you’ve got all those other abstract qualities, but you don’t like the concrete activity of programming, you’re not going to have fun.

Second, more generally than just writers, people who are “makers” do well as programmers. You need to have a love of making something and polishing it until it’s presentable to show to the public. Programming is not a performance skill. You can mess up ten times in a row while nobody’s watching as long as you finally figure it out at the end before you publish it. That’s something that appeals to makers—where you can work on something alone, and you can mess up a whole bunch but you finally get one version of it that looks good. That’s the one you actually show to people and hang up in your gallery. So makers are people I look for.

Q: How much can a bootcamp student actually learn in just twelve weeks? Is that really enough time to produce competent web developers?

A: I think our students are actually very prepared. In some regards, I feel like they’re a lot more prepared than students from other programs. I have interviewed several graduates from other programs and one big difference I’ve noticed between what we teach at CodeCraft and how some other programs work is that many other bootcamps are very focused on one specific stack. They might teach just the MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node), or the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node). But what I’ve found is that students who learn just that stack are really out of their element if they’re asked to work in some other environments.

For CodeCraft’s web development bootcamp, we do use one stack (MEVN: MongoDB, Express, Vue, Node) but what I’m about is teaching evergreen skills—things that are never going to change. So I have a really big emphasis on teaching Linux, the command line, and Git. Those are enormously popular tools developers use every day and they’ve existed in pretty much the same form for decades and I don’t see any reason why they’re going to change in the near future.

“Every web framework is going to have slightly different concepts… but underneath it all, it’s all the same internet.”

Also, I’m big on “web fundamentals” — answering questions like “How does the internet work?” I do this because every web framework is going to have slightly different concepts for how you work with it, but underneath it all, it’s all the same internet. If you understand what’s happening behind it all, it’s really easy to transfer from one framework to another.

Q: How can people enrolling in CodeCraft’s Full Stack Web Development bootcamp (or any bootcamp in general) do well and excel as a student and afterward?

A: The students who excel in bootcamps are the ones that have an aspect of curiosity. People who do exactly what an instructor tells them to do and nothing more, where they come to the lectures, they do the assignments and get passing grades… they will be employable. But they may not love the job they end up with, or they might not be making as much money as they could. The students I really love to see are super curious. I’ll be explaining some concept in the lecture and they just can’t help but ask questions, and they want to go deeper into the topics we discuss in the classroom. They also go to Meetups. Just exploring the community and meeting other people is a really important of being a curious coder.

Also, I always encourage people to apply for jobs that they’re not qualified for if only to talk to the interviewers about what they think is important for an applicant to have. Interviewing for jobs in the past is how I really got to understand deep, complex topics like REST, and how I got to really care about them.

“I always encourage people to apply for jobs that they’re not qualified for if only to talk to the interviewers about what they think is important for an applicant to have.”

It’s important for you to never be the smartest person in the room. I know a lot of people hate feeling dumb, and they hate asking “stupid questions.” I think you need to be comfortable with feeling stupid as a developer. I think that on the road to being smart you will sound stupid many times. I encourage you to try to hang out with people that know more than you, both as a student, and later, as an employee. When you do get a job, you should hope you’re not the smartest developer on your team. I often recommend that students join a medium sized company for their first job so they can get some mentorship. It’s nice to talk to the senior developers and ask them to review your code or just ask questions as they come up. Even shooting the breeze with them at happy hour; you can learn a lot about programming culture and learn some code jokes.

Finally, go to meetups, and be a part of the community. Find out how other people talk about technology. You can read about a topic in a textbook, which is very dry and abstract… but you can meet people in the real world who work with this stuff on a daily basis and have to make choices about picking one technology over another technology. These people have strong opinions about certain things, and I think finding out why they have the opinions they do is something that can really take you above and beyond what you’ll learn in a bootcamp.